


A Friend in Need

by trustingHim17



Series: Moving On [7]
Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sussex, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:13:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24225637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trustingHim17/pseuds/trustingHim17
Summary: Three years into WW1, Watson and Holmes are in their cottage as the sound of gunfire drifts over the channel and memories drift up from the past. Will Watson honor his promise and ask for help?
Series: Moving On [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1719565
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23





	A Friend in Need

He would deny it, but Holmes was puttering, moving restlessly between rooms as I tried to focus on the copy of the _Times_ the vicar had brought us from town.

I turned another page, trying and failing to tune out his restless movement as well as the gunfire I could hear from across the channel.

Three years into the war, and not even Mycroft knew how much longer it would last. I had enlisted two years before, having waited several months after Holmes’ return from America and a few months after moving for us to settle in to the cottage, but I had been medically discharged when the new unit commander had noticed my old wounds. Young enough to stand against me and experienced enough to know that I would potentially slow the unit down, he had sent me home after a medical exam had shown the extent of my long-healed wounds, and I had returned to our Sussex cottage.

It was the middle of summer, and temperatures had soared to record highs the week before, slowing everyone down and stoking my memories. As much as I disliked my shoulder’s complaints about the cooler weather, I would have taken a blizzard over another round of nightmares, and I was sure my lack of sleep was evident. I would be close to dropping off in my chair if I were not so tense.

Holmes, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to hold still. After fidgeting in his armchair for an hour, he had moved to pacing with his pipe, paging through some of his books, and reorganizing something in his bedroom, none of which seemed to help and all of which he left unfinished. The sitting room was a mess of papers and tobacco ash, and I could only hope none of the papers would catch fire. The ash’s placement on the floor rather than in his pipe was no guarantee that the coals were out, as had been proven an unfortunate number of times.

Most of the articles in the paper were uninteresting, drivel, Holmes would have called it. Repetitive nonsense that had all been printed before had been reprinted for the lack of any new information. War news dominated the front page, but the middle was a healthy mix of local happenings, the war, and upcoming events.

I scanned the pages in front of me looking for something to read, anything I could use to keep my mind firmly in the present instead of skipping its way across time and space. My unit had been involved in very few battles when I had enlisted, but however few they had been, they had recalled all I had learned in the Afghan War. I had done well thus far in boxing the memories and shoving them back where they belonged, but for the first time in many years, they were pushing their way to the forefront again.

Holmes’ pacing helped not at all; it was too similar to the steady beat of a soldier on rounds, and it combined with the gunfire drifting from across the channel to remind me of many late nights when sleep became battle, hence my inability to doze off in my chair despite how tired I was.

I was skimming past an article about an upcoming wedding in town when the wind shifted. The sound of gunfire strengthened, and I found myself reading an account describing a soldier’s life in gruesome detail. It was meant to rally support around our soldiers—morale was low and rations were even lower—but with my memories and the noise surrounding me, it was much too accurate.

For one horrible instant, I was back in Afghanistan. Running, fighting, treating, shooting, being shot at. War exploded around me.

The Holmes dropped something in the kitchen, and I dropped back into my armchair with a grunt.

It took everything in me not to crumple the paper. Holmes had asked to have it when I was finished, and I forced myself to fold it up and place it in his chair. A crackling sound filled my ears, and I realized the hand reaching the paper toward the other chair was trembling. I dropped the paper and gripped my chair, desperately fighting to slow my breathing.

The one minor regression could lead to more, I knew, especially since I had no way to escape what was triggering them. This left me with a decision to make, one I could fool myself into thinking had several options. I could lock myself in my room to ride it out after making sure my revolver was in the sitting room. I could go for a walk, leaving while Holmes was busy in the kitchen, and hope that being outside would help in spite of the increased ability to hear the gunfire. I could stay in my chair with a book off the shelf and hope both that he continued pacing the kitchen for a while and that the book would capture my attention.

Or I could honor the promise I had made decades ago and tell Holmes I needed help.

Something crashed behind me, and I tensed again, dropping my head into my hands. I never made a promise I was unwilling to keep, but that never meant I had to like it when keeping that promise was tantamount to admitting weakness. Holmes had proven himself willing to help free of judgement over the years, but I never liked admitting when the past tried to take over the present. I flinched again as something else crashed, and the fight or flight in me started screaming. I would never attack Holmes, and I was still in the present enough to know it was Holmes making the noise. I couldn’t fight. _Get out_. _Run_. _Run, and don’t stop until safe. Until hidden._

“Watson?” I jumped again when his voice sounded, carrying from his bedroom this time, though when he had moved there from the kitchen I had no idea. As it was, I barely avoided a word I had learned at the docks slipping loose. “Do you know where that book is we borrowed from the vicar?”

It was on the table next to the settee, under the pile of papers and one of his chemistry journals he had tossed there that morning, but I didn’t answer, not trusting my voice to produce words in the place of an undignified yelp as something else crashed to the floor. I had been about to try calling for him when he had called to me instead, but now my fight for control had stolen my words. I would have to let my silence do the talking.

“Watson?” he asked when I never responded, as I had known he would. “Are you still in there?”

The gunfire grew louder as the wind shifted again, and I only realized the white-knuckle grip I had on the armrest when my hand began to cramp. I fell into the list I had learned years before in an attempt to ground myself.

Five things I could see. Holmes’ armchair, the fireplace, the tree scratching the window in the wind…

“Watson?” His voice came from behind me that time, and I jumped again, nearly knocking my journal off the table next to me.

Four things I could touch. My slipper, my own armchair, the journal as I straightened it…

The journal. I remembered a technique I had used before. That could work, and it didn’t require speaking. I needed to find a pen, though, and quickly. I started digging through my desk as I continued my list, grasping for anything on which I could focus to keep myself in the present.

What was next? Three things I could hear. Footsteps, gunfire… This wasn’t helping.

“Watson!”

The voice startled me, and I spun around, breathing heavily in my desperate fight for control and nearly slipping into a defensive stance. Holmes stood in his bedroom doorway, on the other side of the room. He had been about to walk closer, but he froze in place when he saw how I was standing. I grunted an acknowledgement and resumed my hunt for a pen, fighting for control, fighting for the words to tell Holmes to get out of the room. My mind was betraying me, conjuring battles decades old and displaying them for my viewing displeasure.

“Watson?!”

I found my voice from the worry in his and finally managed to grunt out, “Grab my revolver, and lock yourself in your room for a while.” My voice was gruff from my struggle for control, beginning to slip into the cadence I had needed to make myself heard over the sounds of battle, the sounds of battle my mind insisted filled this room. If I didn’t find a pen before I lost track of the present, I wanted him where there was no chance I would attack. Neither of us were young, anymore, and we couldn’t shake off an injury quite so easily. If I attacked, one of us would get hurt.

He was silent for a moment, obviously reviewing my words and fitting them into what I wasn’t saying.

“Your revolver’s not even in the cottage at the moment, and if you think I’m going to leave you alone, you are much mistaken.”

I froze briefly, then continued my search for a pen as I wondered where my revolver was if it wasn’t in the cottage. Had I left it somewhere? Had Holmes seen this coming and removed it? If he had seen this coming, why had he insisted we open the windows that morning? I followed that train of thought, using it as a distraction as much as genuinely curious as to where my revolver was. Last I had seen it, it was in the drawer on the other side of the sitting room. Where would Holmes have moved it? The bee shack? That was possible. I hoped he hadn’t given it to someone else to hold, even Stackhurst, but at the moment it was better the weapon was with one of our neighbors than here where I could reach it if I lost my struggle for control. The first time something like this had happened in front of Holmes, I had given him a black eye. A gunshot wound would take far longer to heal, if it ever did, which was why I had wanted him and my revolver out of the room.

Holmes closed the windows with a grunt, greatly diminishing how much of the gunfire I could hear carried on the wind, then placed an open pack of mothballs on the end table. The scent jarred me into the present long enough to see that the pen for which I had been frantically searching and now held in my hand was out of ink, and I latched onto the burning, chemical odor. There had been nothing similar to mothballs in either war.

I heard something behind me and forced myself not to react, not to spin around and attack whoever was sneaking up on me. Nearly shaking with my fight for control, I clutched at the smell of mothballs, grounding myself with the scent separate from any battle in which I had ever taken part. Battles smelled of blood, and heat, and horses, and black power, but never of chemicals. The memories my mind was supplying fought for dominance, trying to overpower my senses and throw me back two years, or thirty. I fought to not react when a voice from the past insisted I needed to run; they would cover my retreat. I could still smell the mothballs; I was in Sussex, not Afghanistan. Mothballs. I was not taking a bullet as Murray leaned over me, not treating a young private who shared my name, not witnessing my comrades die in horrible ways at the hands of the villagers. I was in Sussex. I was safe. I had no need to fight, or run, or help, or retreat. I was in Sussex.

I was safe. Those around me were safe. I was not at war, not in Afghanistan, India, France, or Germany. I was in Sussex.

Mothballs.

Something else filled the background, slowly infiltrating my awareness as I settled more firmly into the present. After a few long moments, I finally recognized Holmes’ violin. I didn’t recognize the piece, however; he was likely playing whatever came to mind, unsure what I might tie to a memory. I let the music take over, lifting me here and there as the melody went where it would. It picked me up out of the memories, drifting through a meadow like a butterfly on the breeze, gusting here and there on a building storm, rippling over stones with a bubbling creek, and, slowly, the memories that had been vying for attention settled back where they were supposed to be: in the past.

I found myself staring at the wall not three feet in front of me, hands clenched around that empty pen, lungs burning as if I had been holding my breath, and my leg protesting the majority of my weight. I inhaled deeply, feeling more in control than I had for most of the day, and relaxed my hands. My nails had left crescents on my palms, and my fingers were beginning to cramp. Setting down the pen, and rubbing and flexing my fingers as I turned around, I saw Holmes was standing near the opposite wall, staring at me as he bowed. The tune changed from a soothing sound reminding me of the birdsong perpetually around my bird feeder out back to one hiding a question, and I nodded. Yes, I was fine, and, yes, he could stop.

He lowered the instrument and raised an eyebrow. _Do you want to talk about it?_

I shrugged my good shoulder. Not really, but I would if he asked.

“What triggered it?” was his question. An understandable question, given how long it had been since my last one.

I focused on the scent of the mothballs still next to me as I answered, “Nightmares, heat, gunfire, pacing, newspaper.” I didn’t have the words to provide a full answer, but the five words should give him enough to figure out the rest.

His gaze sharpened, and he nodded, seeing both how hard I was focusing on the scent of those disgusting mothballs as well as how clipped my words were. I was in the present, yes, but if I focused on the cause for too long, that could still change.

His face twisted in a bit of remorse that he had been part of the problem, but he lifted his violin again before I could say anything. “Any requests?”

My leg started trembling from carrying so much of my weight for however long it had been, and I steadied myself first against the wall, then against my chair. Shaking my head in answer to his question, I settled into my armchair with a smile, content to let the music drive away the memories. We stayed like that for several hours, until night fell, the temperature dropped, and the gunfire faded away. When he grew tired of playing, I let him challenge me to a game of chess—which he won, of course—but whose discussion continued until long after we had seated ourselves in our armchairs and lit our pipes.

It wasn’t until well after dark that I asked him where my revolver was.

“In your drawer, I imagine,” was his stoic response. “That _is_ where you usually keep it.”

For the first time all day, I laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is greatly appreciated on all my stories :)


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